Can we trust them? This is the burden of comments both in India and Pakistan after the meeting between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif. The reaction is not a reflection on the effort the two are making to break the ice. However, it shows that even after 70 years of the Partition, enmity between the two countries remains as entrenched as before. Any step taken to lessen the distance between the two is viewed with doubt and suspicion.

The PMO, headed by Narendra Modi, is now the real power centre. I am sorry to revert to the Emergency yet again, over two successive weeks. RK Dhawan, Indira Gandhi’s confidant, has disclosed that Sonia Gandhi had no qualms about the Emergency.

Forty years may seem to be a long period. But it is not long enough to efface the memory of jungle raj which followed the imposition of the Emergency in 1975. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, mother-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, should have stepped down after the Allahabad High Court disqualified her for using official machinery during the election. The Supreme Court's vacation judge gave her reprieve by pronouncing a stay order.

As a law-abiding citizen, I have a faith in the justice system to rectify wrongs, if any, done to me. I have never been cheated except when the Emergency was declared and I was detained without any rhyme or reason.

When movements get converted into political parties, they lose their original shape. The ethos of collective leadership takes a backseat and personal assertion comes to the fore. Power gets concentrated in one person. In real, the leadership acquires the meaning of one-man rule, which becomes synonymous for the party.

Suppose India had lost the World Cup cricket match against Pakistan at Adelaide, the reaction among its people would have been that of disappointment and remorse. But I do not think that they would have initiated scuffles with Pakistani spectators. The Indians would not have destroyed television sets as some did in Karachi and elsewhere in Pakistan. Of course, there would have been a sense of humiliation, but it would not have poured on to the streets in the shape of fracas or demonstrations.

THE only good thing Prime Minister Indira Gandhi did in her repressive rule during the Emergency was to include the words, Secularism and Socialism, in the Preamble to the Constitution. Morarji Desai, who succeeded her, had all the changes she made in the Constitution deleted, but retained the amendment to the Preamble.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi must be regretting that he invited President Barack Obama for the Republic Day. The latter made no secret of demolishing the Bharatiya Janata Party's ghar wapsi slogan and the other programmes related to Hindutva ideology. He reminded India of its commitment to religious freedom, consecrated in the Constitution.

Dhaka was understandably in the midst of violence a few days ago because Begum Khalida Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) had given a call for a blockade. Hers was a protest against the polls held on January 5 last year when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won a majority even before a single vote was cast.

Two boys have been killed in Kashmir. The incident itself is bizarre. A white car is mistaken for the one which used to carry terrorists back and forth. As many as 115 bullets were fired at the car in one go. The only surviving passenger, a boy, emphasised how the incessant fury did not stop even after the car hit a tree to come to a halt.

After the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992, the Muslims felt for the first time since Independence that they were a minority in the real sense. Partition, on the basis of religion, did not cast a shadow on their future. But the liberal era of Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian Constitution guaranteeing equality to all citizens saw the country through a period which otherwise could have been more violent and more divided, given the bloodshed that took place on both sides on the basis of religion. One million people were estimated to have been killed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US, in more ways than one, was a success. He may not have brought with him anything tangible from America but has created a climate of confidence and won back Washington, which always looked at India with suspicion. Here is a person who was denied a US visa, who was able to shame the US Administration with speeches of friendship with America.